Search Results for: native americans

Following a four-day trial, a US federal judge ruled on Friday that North Dakota’s 2021 legislative redistricting plan violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) because it dilutes the voting power of Native American voters. The case is in the US District Court for the District of North Dakota. Chief Judge Peter D. Welte [...]

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation filed a complaint in US federal court Wednesday against the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, accusing the city of violating tribal sovereignty by writing tickets to tribal members for traffic violations committed within reservation boundaries. The nation asserts that the city lacks criminal jurisdiction over Native Americans on the tribe’s lands without [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Tuesday in favor of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation’s dispute with the state of Idaho regarding the tribe’s hunting rights on US land. The court found that an 1868 treaty between the Shoshone and the US allows tribe members to hunt on [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona have declined to charge Border Patrol (BP) agents for the fatal shooting of Raymond Mattia, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, according to tribal leadership. The statement from the Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose and the [...]

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills on Tuesday that compel California public universities to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 2001 (Repatriation Act), which requires state agencies that receive state funding to provide a process for the identification and repatriation of Native American remains and cultural items to the [...]

A man was shot Thursday in Espanola, New Mexico during a protest over the reinstallation of a statute of the conquistador Juan de Onate, who massacred and enslaved the Acoma Indigenous people in 1599. Juan de Onate was eventually charged with using “excessive force” against the Acoma people. According to the New Mexico State Police [...]

“The existence of `system’ in the world is obvious to every observer of nature, no matter whom.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959)           Whether conspicuous or obscure, terrorism generally presents itself as a systemic challenge. This means, inter alia, that seemingly singular strategic and legal matters may actually be many-sided and interrelated. Regarding legal issues, though [...]

In the summer of 1983, ethnic violence swept the island nation of Sri Lanka. Known as Black July, the outbreak of communal violence between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority communities left thousands dead and hundreds missing. Four decades later, the legacy of the violence lives on, searing Sri Lanka‘s social and political landscape. This [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit Monday attempting to block the Oklahoma from opening the US’s first religious charter school. The proposed charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, would be run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The suit, filed by the ACLU on behalf of several Oklahoma residents, [...]

The great end of government and laws is human happiness; the rulers ought, therefore, to understand and know on what it consists; and the means of producing it. — Hon. Jesse Root, “On the Principles and End of Government” The summer of 1776 was quite productive in the annals of American intellectual and legal thought. [...]